Blank
by Tilt5000
Summary: The Motorcycle Boy's latest ride comes to a screeching halt that has him hospital bound. He finds this rather funny. Set a few months before the beginning of Rumble Fish, Motorcyle Boy's POV.
1. Chapter 1

Dawn kissed the road ahead, casting my shadow far ahead, as if it was trying to race me. I hadn't realized what I was doing, riding the night away. Maybe it had been a blank; my memories of the past few hours were fuzzy at best. Or maybe this ride had been outside of time. A good bike had always been my wardrobe.

The sleek black puma whisked along, its steady purr gyrating against the insides of my thighs. It was a motorcycle, but not a machine. If you went looking for its motor, you would find a beating heart. It ran on blood instead of gasoline.

I didn't know whose it was or where I'd gotten it. Hell, I barely knew where I was. But I was going home, and if the puma's owner wanted it, they'd find it eventually. It was winter; I remembered the feeling of the wind, fresh and cool and cutting through the seams of my jacket, but I wasn't sure when that was. I couldn't feel anything at the moment. Not the cold that was turning my hands an amusing shade of blue, the warm mugginess of my own breath trapped inside my helmet or the heat of the animal I road astride. I barely noticed the progression of morning, that I was no longer the sole patron of the road.

The sound of the motor, of my breathing, suddenly cut out like a turned off radio. I knew the signs well enough - I was about to go blank. The last thing I remembered was wondering if the upcoming traffic light was signaling 'stop' or 'go'.

I didn't see or feel or hear the impact, but I imagined later how it must have been. Blaring horns, the sharp crack of metal on metal - or bone - and tires screeching as they swerved. Perhaps a few screams. By the time I could hear regularly again, that presumed cacophony of noise had died down. Muffled through the helmet, I strained to hear the conversations of the onlookers.

"Oh, God, is he dead?"

"Someone check..."

"Naw, look, he's breathing. He's just out."

There was light, either because I was only then registering it or because someone had pulled my helmet off. Possibly both. I opened my eyes to see several grey, hollow faces staring down at me, encroaching on the white expanse of sky above. One lady looked about ready to give me her kidney, if I happened to need it. I found that very funny, and decided to enjoy it fully, because I knew the pain was coming. A man knelt by my head, pressing the helmet between his hands. "How're you feeling, kid?"

I looked up at him, past him to the white of the sky. "Dandy," I said, and smiled. He looked back at me like I was loony. "Where, exactly, am I hurt?" I asked, trying to push myself up on my elbows. A few of the lookers-on took a step back.

"Wait," the man gasped, his hand hovering just above my chest, as if he was considering pushing me back down. "For God's sake, don't move until the ambulance gets here." When I didn't keep going, but didn't lie back either, the puzzled look crept back into his face. "Can't you... feel it?"

"Feel wh-" _Oh. _My leg started to burn, shooting sparks of pain up my spine; throbs from the back of my head met them halfway, and I felt like I might break right it two. I think I must've blacked out, in the normal way, because I still felt the pain, and the cold running over my hands and face, and a damp warmth soaking through the legs of my jeans. I came around for a few seconds just before they loaded me on the ambulance, long enough to catch a glimpse of the puma, lying forgotten on the curb of the intersection. She looked all right. White-clad emergency techs swarmed around me, pulling me onto a gurney. It hurt like the nine rings of hell, but I laughed, laughed until it brought prickles to the backs of my eyes. One tech asked me why I was laughing, but I couldn't see him anymore and didn't bother to answer the darkness.

"Thank God," I think I said, though my hearing was going out, so I may've just thought it. "Thank God, she was too beautiful to die."


	2. Chapter 2

The doctor didn't believe me when I said I'd forgotten my name. Rather, he didn't believe me once I'd convinced him I didn't have amnesia. I gave him my father's name, which at least gave him an excuse to leave the room and get away from me. Doctors have never liked me. I don't have anything in particular against them. I was glad I'd gotten that doctor, he was funny.

The pain came and went; it wasn't the worst concussion I'd ever had, but it might've been the worst break. The pain was out when they set it, which was probably a Godsend, though I got some funny looks for the lack of screaming.

I expected to see the police before anyone else, but I went to sleep and woke up and there was Rusty-James, standing over me like a guardian angel. He looked worried for a second, like that woman, waiting to give me a kidney, but he smiled when he saw me laughing.

"I must've been closer to home than I thought," I said, the croak in my own voice a little surprising.

"Nice to see you, too," he replied. "The old man's gonna come round tonight."

"Hm." I looked up at the white ceiling, trying not to grimace as the pain came in again. "Does anyone else know I'm here?"

Rusty-James shook his head, pulling a chair up to the bed. "I wouldn't tell no one. Unless you want me to."

I think I may have laughed. "That lot don't need to know about this. It would ruin the illusion." That, and there might be a few "old friends" of mine eager enough to kick me when I was down.

Looking a little lost, Rusty-James screwed up his face and asked, "What about Cassandra? She's gonna keep bugging me until I tell you where you are. I swear, she's at our place more than I am."

I'd almost forgotten about Cassandra. I didn't tell Rusty-James that; he would've told her just to get her riled up. "Thinks you're my keeper, does she?" I muttered riley, but either he didn't hear me or didn't know what that meant. "You can tell her. Though the nurses might be disappointed."

Rusty-James grinned slightly. "Bet they will. Hey, how the hell did this happen, anyway?"

I must've smiled - Rusty-James got that nervous look that he only had when I was smiling - "I ran a red light, I think."

The door had been standing open, and my half of the hospital room was closest it. Two police officers, badges flashing white under the stark lighting, came in without knocking. They were saying something - I saw their lips moving out of the corner of my eye - but I couldn't hear them. Rusty-James stood up, putting himself between me and them. He could be really odd, sometimes, that Rusty-James.

He was still there, sitting again, when I came back, but the cops were gone. I glanced at the wall clock hanging across from the bed. "Hey, shouldn't you be in school?"

"It's Saturday," he said plainly. I wondered why I didn't know that. Maybe I'd been out longer than I thought. But then, my sense of time had always been a little screwed. "I got rid of 'em. The police. The guy who owned the cycle and the lady who hit you ain't pressing charges, and I told them about you bein' color blind. They ain't gonna fine you for runnin' the light."

"Hm."

"I told the doctor your name. Pretty funny that you forgot it." He paused, looking hard at my face. "He told me you won't let them give you nothin' for the pain. Ain't it bad?"

"Sometimes," I replied placidly, watching the long hand of the clock. "When I can feel it. But I don't want any of that s-. It's the same as dope, you know. It messes with your brain the same way. Just because some quack in a white coat gives it to me, it don't mean I can't get hooked on it."

Rusty-James was silent for a while. Or maybe my hearing went. I could feel the pain about to come in, the faint tingling in my leg, wrapping around the back of my skull and the center of my forehead.

"There are worse things than pain." Was I thinking that, or did I say it aloud? I looked up at Rusty-James, who stared back at me blankly. "Have you ever tried drugs?" I asked offhand. His blank expression went somehow blanker.

"No," he muttered, "'course not. You told me you'd break my arm if I did."

"Oh?" I didn't remember that. What a funny thing to say. "Good for me. I won't forget this time." Rusty-James smiled. Odd way to react to a threat.

I looked back at the ceiling, thinking about all the men I knew - most of them younger that Rusty-James was now - that the Packer's had lost, figuratively or literally, to the drugs. I'd tried to keep them off my streets, but the boys weren't with me; fine time to decide they didn't believe my every word by virtue of my godhood anymore. Thanks to the dope, the hoppers, all our fun came to an end. It was sudden in some ways, but I had known it was coming. And I'd known from the start that I neither wanted nor needed the drugs; I didn't see why anyone else wanted them, either. Life itself was so deliciously diverting.

"It is not in the stars to hold our destinies, but in ourselves."

"Who said that?"

I looked over, almost surprised to see my brother there. I was a little more out of it that usual. At least, I thought I was. It must've been the new concussion. "William Shakespeare. But it's a load of bull, anyway. It ain't just drugs that mess with you, Rusty-James. Everything affects the brain: how much you sleep, what you eat, everything you hear and see and feel. Drugs are just public enemy number one. Every decision you think you're making is really the result of a collection of corresponding physical and mental variables-" I stopped there, partly because I was losing my audience. I could get going as good as the old man, if I felt like it. But the pain was getting pretty severe, and my throat was hoarse. "Get me some water, will ya'?" Rusty-James nodded feebly and disappeared. I think I slept while he was gone, or went out again. Before I knew it, he was pressing a little plastic cup into my hand.

"I asked a nurse to bring you more, she's coming. I gotta' run, if I don't meet the guys they'll wanna know what kept me."

I didn't say, 'And you're a terrible liar', but we both knew the other was thinking it. I would have nodded, but my head felt like it was being jack hammered. Instead, I swigged the water in one gulp and looked back at the clock. I didn't realize that Rusty-James was talking until I noticed his lips moving.

"Hm?"

"I said, I'm glad you didn't die, Motorcycle Boy."

I laughed to myself. Odd timing. I'd been much closer to death than this, and he'd never said anything like that before. Not that I remembered, anyway. "Yeah, I'm pretty happy about it, too."

Rusty-James smiled, a little uneasily, and walked away.


	3. Chapter 3

The old man came by just before he was due at his usual haunts. He brought an armful of books with him. "On the off chance that you were bored."

"Bored?" I t hadn't occurred to me that I could be bored. There had been an awful lot of nurses coming in and out - it seemed to me that a hospital that size shouldn't need that many nurses in one section - who asked a lot of not-so-medical questions. Between their visits, or sometimes in the middle of them, I slept, or blanked, or watched the older man in the other bed. He didn't seem interested in talking, but he was fun to look at. His face was lined with stories that, without his cooperation, I could read any way I wanted. Though I suppose books were just as good, and easier on a bruised brain.

He didn't sit down, just stood by the bed, presumably because he didn't plan on staying long. "I hate to ask you this after you've just been hurt..." he started, then paused. I nodded for him to go on. If this was important, it was better for him to ask it before I lost hearing or consciousness. "Do you have a way to pay for this?" He waved his blocky hands in a way that vaguely indicated the hospital.

"I have money," I sighed. "If I come up short, I'll call in some favors and debts for the rest of it."

"Right," he muttered, swaying a bit on his feet. He wasn't quite drunk enough yet to explain that. "I'll tell Russell-James."

I might've asked what he meant by that, but I was on my way out, and the relief from the pain was so great that I didn't try to fight it.

My father's voice continued, muffled as if I had my helmet back on; I felt the thrum of a motor under my pelvis. "It's so odd to see you lying still," he burbled, the voice distorted and far off. "It doesn't quite suit you." There was something like a chuckle, or maybe a cough, but it seemed to be coming from miles and miles away. I was completely out after that. It didn't really matter - I'm sure he was on his way out, too.

One day in the hospital down. I woke up early and watched the sun rising through the far window, my roommate's pleasant, gravelly snoring keeping me from blanking. It was still plenty early when the first wave of nurses started. One brought me breakfast, one checked my blood pressure, one replaced the bandage on my arm, one fluffed my pillow, and three more came and were turned away because they couldn't think of anything else that needed doing. I suppose I should've been thinking, "Hell, I'm one lucky -," but they didn't appeal to me. For one thing, they weren't that bright - any one of them could've done all those things, killing two birds with one stone: they got more time with me, and the others got none. They also kept calling me by name, which I found unusually annoying. I guess it's not appropriate to be on a nickname basis with a patient, even if you have no problem flirting with him.

The bandage changing nurse was still at it when Rusty-James came in. She ignored him, and he ignored her. I could tell by the look on his face that he would've sold half his soul to get that kind of attention. He glared reproachfully at me when he caught me laughing, but he didn't say anything about it. "You feel any better?"

"Yeah." It was a lie, but it wouldn't do to tell the truth. Even to Rusty-James, I was the living legend. He liked the illusion as much as everyone else, though perhaps he didn't buy into it as completely. "You kept your mouth shut about me being here?"

"'Course," he sniffed, settling into the bedside chair. "I told Cassandra, that's it. Cathy already knew, since her mom works here, but I made sure she wouldn't tell no one."

"Cathy?" Should I have known who that was?

"Yeah," he replied, as if answering the unspoken question. "Cathy's my girlfriend."

"Huh." I wondered if I'd forgotten, or if I'd just never known. "Is she blond?" I sort of remembered Rusty-James being all over blonds, back when he was a Pee-Wee Packer and couldn't keep his hormones in check. I used to get complaints from people who didn't realize it was a bad idea to bring their little sisters around. The Packers never were the brightest bunch.

Rusty-James shrugged. "She is now."

The nurse was done with my arm. She patted my shoulder and smiled real pretty and told me to "rest up". I smiled back at her. Rusty-James got this deer-in-headlights look of shock, like he'd never seen me smile without malicious intent before. The nurse happened to pass Cassandra as she was coming in, and they exchanged glares. I found this absolutely hilarious; the look on her face. Priceless. Cassandra proceeded to fawn over my arm and leg in a way that made Rusty-James look a little sickly. Like the nurse, they happily ignored each other.

"I knew something bad had happened," she moaned, running a hand through my hair. I kept forgetting to ask someone to bring me a comb. "I felt it." I had to try pretty hard not to let on how funny that was. Cassandra was always trying to make out that she and I were soul mates. She didn't realize that I'd sold my soul at the age of thirteen for the position of devil's advocate.

I cupped her face with my good hand and drew her into me. All the pain was almost worth being able to feel the warmth of her mouth, fusing with mine. I'd started dating Cassandra because she was funny, and almost quick enough to keep up with our conversations, most of the time, and a little more sane than other girls that had been willing to date me more than once. I'd held on to her because, to top it off, she wasn't bad. I just wished she'd wear shoes more often.

By the time I thought to look, Rusty-James was gone. He came back a few minutes later, after Cassandra had left for work, complaining that the vending machine only had soda.

"Were you expecting the hard stuff?" I asked, staring at my hands and willing another memory blackout to come on, so they could keep doing what they'd been doing.

Rusty-James sighed while I laughed. "This is a hospital. Shouldn't they have healthier stuff?"

I would've shrugged, but the forced black out was coming pretty slow and my arm was sore. "Try the cafeteria." He nodded and left. That gave me more time. Cassandra's ghost was in the room with me, and I knew I was no longer seeing truly, and the pain was ebbing away. I took her in a way that wasn't strictly plausible, in my condition, but I didn't feel it the way I sometimes could, maybe because I was blocking the pain at the same time.

I looked into her gray eyes in a gray face, with gray strands of hair brushing my cheek without tickling. She'd been wearing shoes when she came in, since it was hospital policy, but she wasn't anymore. Randomly, I asked, "What color is your hair?"

"Red," she replied with a smile. I wasn't sure if her hair was really red, or if I was only imagining it; I didn't think I'd ask. The blank-dream went on, but it didn't satisfy. I thought about her legs on my legs, her toes stretching down the caress the tops of my feet, her hands and lips all over my face; it was no good. Smiling sadly, I looked up into her eyes, and my fingers brushed her cheek, which wasn't soft, though it should have been. "Goodnight," I said, putting my hand through her face. The illusion shattered, and I slipped quietly into the black.


	4. Chapter 4

Nobody was around when I came to. I perused a few of the books the old man'd brought, but my brain was still a little fuzzier than usual, and I didn't have the attention at hand to read properly. Rusty-James had left his own offering while I was out; I flipped through the thin magazines, half looking at the pictures.

The lady who ran into me came by in the afternoon. She didn't look quite ready to give me a kidney anymore, but she did look very sorry. She seemed about old enough to have had kids my age, but that was pure speculation on my part. I held my good hand up before she got her first word out, still standing in the doorway with her coat half-off.

"If you plan on apologizing, allow me to accept now and have that be the end of it." She was staring at me a little strangely, her mouth hanging open from the aborted opening word. I stared back at her, trying to appear sincere. It'd been a while since I'd done anything that hard, but really, I didn't appreciate lengthy apologies. It's all useless words in the end. I motioned vaguely to the bed-side chair, the sort of unspoken invitation that she would only get if she was looking for it. I guess she was; she sat down in utter silence, though her lips had met again and were now pressed thoughtfully together.

"How badly are you hurt?"

I laughed to myself, though all that woman would see was a half-baked smirk. "I've had worse."  
She nodded weakly. "Your name is-"

"The Motorcycle Boy," I interrupted. The name the nurses had told her was by no means my name.

I think she laughed, or else coughed; she was a nervous sort of person, I thought, and was trying to stand on a ceremony that she didn't know the rules of. "I do wish you'd let me say 'I'm sorry'."

"Well, there you go," I returned, and she smiled. "It's my fault, really," I said, contemplatively. I wasn't in the habit of admitting faults - it made all the difference when the person across from you saw you as a human being, rather than a demi-god. Freed you up to do all sorts of things you wouldn't normally do. "I ran the red light. By the way, is your car damaged?"

"Nothing worth worrying about."

"Good," I said with a shallow nod, trying not to irritate my head. It was throbbing a bit. "I haven't got any money to give you for it anyway."

The lady stared at me for a long second, then laughed until she hiccupped. "Sorry," she sighed, picking up her purse and threading her arms through her coat sleeves. "I can see it was silly of me to come."

I think I may have smiled - I was laughing inside. "Perhaps, if you had hit just any speeding fool on a motorcycle, this would've been the proper thing to do."

She smiled at me over her shoulder, her hand hovering above the doorframe. "Get well soon," she said.

"Goodnight."


	5. Chapter 5

(A.N. - Yes, it's the shortest one yet, sorry. Another one's on it's way.)

I set my partially casted foot down experimentally, ignoring the three nurses hovering in easy arm's reach. This was the first day that doctor had agreed to let me up, which I guess meant I could start walking around, and maybe go home soon. I didn't much care if I went home, since I wouldn't be out and about for a while yet, and I probably wouldn't so much as stick my head out the door as long as the cast stayed on. Bad for the image. I'd been hurt bad before, especially in the rumbles, but I'd been younger then, and maybe I'd become more vain since then. All I really cared about was getting my leg back, sans hip-high plaster, and this was part of that. So I stood up, wobbled a bit to make the nurses nervous, and took a few steps. They looked surprised; maybe I shouldn't have been up to that yet. Maybe I should've been howling in pain. My feeling happened to be out when they'd decided I could give it a try.

Rusty-James got all excited when he came in later and found me standing. I'd laughed at him a little, but he just smiled. "Aren't you happy?" he asked, lending me an arm I didn't want as I lowered myself to the bed.

"Well," I hummed, looking down at the cast, "it means I'll be able to ride again soon." Rusty-James sighed heavily and plopped down in the chair. I could've mentioned that it meant I could now go to the bathroom by myself, which was quite the extra-ordinary perk, but I figured I'd exasperated him enough. For that visit, anyway. "What did you expect me to say?"

"I dunno," he sighed. "I shouldn't be surprised. It's not like I don't know how you feel about the cycles. You'll be ridin' 'em till you die, right?"

"Hm." I hoisted my leg back up on the bed, setting myself up on the backboard. "You ever try riding, Rusty-James?"

"Naw. One of the guys tried to teach me to drive once, and I wasn't no good at it. I probably wouldn't be any better with a motorcycle." He paused, like he wasn't sure if he should say what he was thinking. "I was always kinda scared to try. Like, scared that I would get addicted to 'em and start taken' 'em for joy rides. And God knows I get in enough trouble."

He looked up and caught me laughing at him. He turned away, crossing his arms over his chest.

"I don't think that'll happen," I said. "I doubt it's a genetic condition. And anyway, you show no early symptoms." I wondered briefly why he looked so disappointed.

"Well, but," he muttered, "doesn't this mean you can come home soon?"

"Hm," I sighed, letting my eyes drift up to the ceiling. My leg was starting to throb.

"Don'tcha want to, Motorcycle Boy?"

I looked at him seriously, and he sort of jerked away. I tried not to laugh. "It ain't so much that I mind going home than that I mind staying there. And you can't say anything, Russell-James, 'cause you hate being cooped up there worse than I do."


	6. Chapter 6

Someone was calling my name - my real name - from somewhere beyond the edge of the dark. Even when I was half-out, it bugged me to hear that name; it wasn't me. The fact that I could hear or be bothered by hearing it all meant I was coming in, probably, and I thought maybe that something was touching me. I tried to call myself more definitively in, forced my eyes to see through a fuzzy gray haze. One of the regular nurses was standing over me, her hand resting on my shoulder.

"You're up," she said with a nervous sort of smile. Most of the nurses weren't quite used to the blanks yet, though they said it reminded them of comas, except I could keep doing things - I knew I read during them, because I would come in and be ten pages farther than I had been and not know what had happened. I could walk around - when walking was a physical possibility - reasonably well, and drive motorcycles, unless I went out right as I was trying to decipher a streetlight. I couldn't write. I remembered flunking out on an English final because I blanked before I got to the essays, and there were nothing but a few scribbles on the paper. My teacher'd yelled at me 'cause he thought I was slacking off - I usually did decent in that class. I was sure I'd done stuff like that more than once, but that English final was the only one I could remember real well.

I blinked, settling myself back in the world, and sat up on my elbows, watching as Denise's hand fell limply off my shoulder. I liked Denise. She had funny eyes, almost as light as the sclera, and she had a sense of humor. "Whatcha need?"

"A bunch of us are taking patients down to the lounge to watch the Academy Awards. Do you want me to walk you down?"

I didn't usually watch TV - didn't really have anywhere to go see one - but I thought an award show sounded fun. Famous people were silly. Almost as silly as the normal people around them. So I swung my bum leg out and clamored to my feet and let Denise walk down with me under only slight protest.

I couldn't really get into the show. I've always had a thing about watching screens; I couldn't connect to what was going on very well. Probably explained why I'd never been much bothered by not watching a lot of TV. I always ended up watching the people around me instead; I guess I found their reactions easier to read. But I liked seeing the cameras at the show panning over the audience, too, and some of the sobby acceptance speeches were amusing, so I spent half my time watching the TV and the rest of it watching my fellow patients.

The TV was a color one. I'd learned after a while that there's a subtle difference between seeing something in black and white because that's the way it is or because there are colors there that your brain's not picking up. I looked at that fancy building packed with fancy decked-out people and tried to call up colors from my memory, to imagine what that room must look like. I couldn't do that very often, either because it was so long ago that I'd lost it or that my memory itself had never been all that great. The only thing guaranteed to bring it back, if only for a second, was the river. I was never sure why that was.

I turned from watching a kid, plastered up like me, in time to catch another crowd shot. For a second, I thought I must be imagining the familiarity of that face in the crowd, but as the camera panned back, closer, I registered who it was. The screen burst into color, streaming out from the red-lipped woman with wine-colored hair. The shot changed, and the color faded out with her face, back into the memory I couldn't tap.

I watched for her after that, though I no longer had the color to help me. Even in the sea of grey faces, I could pick her out. It seemed like she was exactly the same, but that couldn't be. At any rate, all the important things were the same: the insincere, pointed smile, the laughter-bedazzled eyes.

My Mother. Funny that, after all those years, I would see her like that, on TV, several state lines away. I'd outgrown expecting to see her again a long time ago, though the old man had given up on her the second her heels hit the road, and even then I'd known it. I guess it goes to show that TV'd shrunk the world.

I thought, then, that it was strange she'd only gotten to California. It had been a long time, and the way she'd been talking when she left, I'd half expected her to have circled the world twice by then. Maybe she'd gotten farther and come back.

Watching her sitting in the audience, clapping obediently along with the man hanging on her arm, I wanted to see her. In person, not through a damn screen. I knew it wouldn't do any good to see her; she wasn't coming back, and I didn't really want her to. I just wanted to see her.

I'd never been a gang member, always a gang leader, even when I was young. They flocked to me out of a need to belong, and they belonged with me and to me. I had never belonged to them, because I'd never belonged to or with anyone. Almost anyone. Maybe they assumed that I didn't need it, but that wasn't quite true. Whatever else I was, I was still intrinsically human.

I could find her, I thought. If I looked. And if I did, even if nothing came of it, we'd probably both get a kick out of it.

A. N. - Okay, here's where I need some feedback. I'm could either to stop here or keep going, picking up when Motorcycle Boy leaves the hospital and goes to California. Please keep in mind that, the farther I go with this, the more I'm going to have to improvise. The integrity of Motorcycle Boy's character is the most important part of this story, but it's also the hardest part because there's precious little to go on. So I'm leaving it up to you. I'm not going to do a number limit, but if I see that people are generally unsatisfied with this as an ending, I'll continue. (The third option is to just do a wrap-up chapter of Motorcycle Boy meeting his mom, which I wouldn't mind doing either. So if you do want more, would you like an ending one-shot, or a Part 2?) I hope everyone's enjoyed the story - I've had fun writing it, for sure.

God bless,

~Tilt


	7. Chapter 7

I went to the apartment and kept doing what I'd been doing: sitting around and reading. Rusty-James liked it better with me there, I think. Maybe he'd got sick of going to the hospital all the time. I still had to go back often; I got Cassandra to drive me. If I saw someone I knew, I ignored them. Guys were always waving at me, asking where I'd been. We just drove by.

It wasn't long before they downgraded me to a smaller cast. The only really important thing about this was I could pull my jeans down over it. I made my reappearance at the hall like nothing had happened, and no one mentioned it. They mentioned it when I got around to going back to school, though. I got called into a counselors office. I'd been in there before, mostly for little things. I didn't cause a lot of trouble. No sense causing trouble where you're likely to get interrupted before the fun really starts. Some of the teachers didn't like the way I stared at them, especially when I blanked.

Mr. Kheel pressed him fingertips together like little steeples and leered at me. I didn't think he had any reason to be mad. Accidents happened, kids missed school. "Do you realize you've missed a substantial amount of classes, young man?"

I couldn't remember the last time someone called me a young man. It sounded derogatory, the way he said it. "Yes. Does the doctor's note not cover everything?"

"The doctor's note is fine," he intones, like he's saying something profound. "What I want to know is, are you going to be able to catch up?"

"I'm not behind." Rusty-James got some of my books for me. I didn't have any patience for it, cooped up in the apartment, but I'd got some done, and I could catch up easy.

Mr. Kheel tilted his finger-steeples toward me, like he was aiming a gun. "Can I set you up with a tutor?"

I almost laughed. "I don't need it."

His face was going kind of purple. "Young man, do you realize that midterms are coming up soon?"

This guy was getting on my nerves. "I'll be ready for them. I'll ace them, if it makes you happy."

He guffawed, once; sounded like a goat getting its throat slit. "If you ace those exams, I'll eat my hat!"

I don't know if he ever did eat a hat. He did expel me, though. I didn't mind. The hospital bill had come in, and I needed some time to scrounge around for the shortfall.

I'd done enough thumping around, hitting up everyone who owed me money and shooting pool for the rest, to pay the bill when they called me in again to take the cast off. I wasn't even thinking about how much they might charge me for it. By then, almost everyone know I'd busted my leg, and I wanted to be back in prime shape before anyone got it in their heads that this was the time to come looking for me. I don't put up with that - anymore, but that doesn't keep it from happening.

Cassandra drove me, said she wanted to go out and celebrate afterwards. I climbed in next to her, my leg feeling surprisingly light. We went to the bar and got beers, just like we would've any other night. I wondered if this really qualified as celebrating. Maybe the celebratory part was how Cassandra kept telling everyone how I was 'all fixed up now.' If I hadn't been in such a good mood, I would've left. When I got fed up, I shot pool instead, though most of the guys there knew me too well to play for money. A few I hadn't seen since my last joyride came and played me. They smelled like pot, but I let it go 'cause I was feeling pretty good and they were loose with their bets. I'd made a few hundred dollars before Cassandra called me back to the bar.

"They're replaying the Academy Awards," she explained, shoving a topped-off mug into my hands. I kinda felt like I might go out soon; I was having trouble focusing on her. But the mug still felt good, chill. "Have you ever seen one, Motorcycle Boy?"

"No, I don't believe so." I glanced up at the little black and white, resting an elbow on the bar.

"Well, I missed it. Sit and watch with me."

I wasn't expecting much. It was even harder to focus on the TV than on Cassandra. Then the black and white burst into color, and I jolted all the way back from the edge, right into my seat, and my ears felt like the noise of the bar was exploding, pitch-perfect, into them. I grabbed the edge of the stool. "I've seen this before," I whisper. Cassandra isn't looking at me. "I'm going for a ride."

She doesn't notice 'til I'm halfway out the door. There are a few cycles parked out front. I pick the one that looks sturdiest, straddling it to make sure the fit's good. Cassandra's calling at me from the door. I hotwire the cycle and pull out. Whoever owns the cycle I hijacked doesn't seem to have noticed.

I coast through the encroaching twilight, feeling the wind ripping at me. The cycle didn't have a helmet with it. Usually I wouldn't mind, but after the latest concussion, I figured I'd lift one once I got out of town.

Now, which way was California?


	8. Chapter 8

A.N. - So, jumping over some traveling bits, but I'm thinking there's maybe another two or three chapters coming before I wrap this up. This one's kinda short, sorry. Next one won't be.

"Hey," I said when she answered the door.

Her unpainted lips split into a nude, flashing grin. "Hey yourself. What brings you to my doorstep?"

"It's me," I said. "Calvin."

Her smile dropped, and she blinked her eyes miles back. "Well. Hello, Cal." She drew the door open wide as her grin slipping back into place. She was dressed nice for someone who didn't seem to be going anywhere. "Isn't this town just a laugh?"

I let her lead me in, watched my leathery reflection in the waxed receiving-hall floor and polished pink marble side-tables. "Sure. Rumor is you're scrounging off some boyfriend."

She tutted, a smirk folding her cheek. "Your old lady's too mature for boyfriends. But I suppose I'll introduce you to him anyway." She padded through the halls in her stocking feet. The sound made me think a something, something familiar, or missing. She talked about some book she was reading, but I wasn't sure if the distraction was what mixed up my memory. "And at one point she meets a boy named Cal," the old lady said, "and can't think of what it might be short for except California. I wish that book had come out before you were born. Wouldn't it be something to have a name like California?"

"No one calls me Cal anymore."

"Hah! I knew it wouldn't stick. Who wants to be named after some old president, even if it is Coolidge? Here's the man of the hour." She pushed open a glass door and jutted her hip at an older man in a porch chair. He was the same guy she'd been with when I saw her on TV. Light shimmered off the square, blue pool in their topiaried cement backyard. I kept one eye on the water, the tiny playing waves. "Ger," she said, "this is my boy Calvin. I'm going to set him up in the guest room."

For a long moment, he just stared at her over the edge of his paper. "I didn't know you had children." He spared me a glance. "Good to meet you, I suppose. How long is he staying?"

"I haven't asked." The old lady slunk back through the door and smiled thin at him. "Let's do dinner out tomorrow." She turned, slid the door shut with her foot, and walked on. "If you got a motel you'd better cancel it."

"I haven't," I said.

"Don't mind Ger," she said as she went upstairs. "He's fine enough but not worth listening to. Dull. I've got my eye on an artist, lives in a tree house."

I pictured my old lady living in a tree house like the Swiss Family Robinson.

"It ain't that funny," she said.

"I wasn't laughing."

She turned to me, looking down since she was on a higher step. "Weren't you? I thought I heard a mad cackle rattling inside your ribs."

She showed me to the guest room, beige and pristine with a short stack of sterile novels on the nightstand. "My cycle's parked on the street," I said. She tossed me the garage keys. "My name's the Motorcycle Boy."

"Fitting," she said. "We weren't made to stay put." She ghosted away to haunt the house. When she left the room, I lost all the colors again.


	9. Chapter 9

It wasn't until I went downstairs the next morning that I thought of it. Somehow when I opened the fridge door I expected the familiar flock of cheap wine bottles, tossed together like clumsy bowling pins. Instead there was a juice carton and eggs and butter and creamer and a bottle of fancy liquor. Not seeing those wine bottles where my brain wanted them to be pulled Tulsa out of my memory, made me think of the old man and Rusty-James. I poured myself a glass of liquor and went out to the porch. It must've been about sunrise. I wondered if my old lady would show up so I could see some colors.

She hadn't asked about them. Maybe she forgot, imagined she'd created me some sort of vacuum. For my mother, I expected, two planes battled at the forefront of her mind: things on the horizon and things at unreachable distance. Her own past or present weren't removed enough to be worth her notice. Why should she pay attention to Ger when there was an artist in her future? Why think of the old man when the world was chock-full of people she hadn't already cast aside?

She padded up behind me in her stocking feet. I had a vague impression that I had once ignored someone's rant about women who walked around without shoes on. The horizon was red.

She handed me a paperback, the one she'd been talking about yesterday. "A lady named Plath wrote it. She's committed suicide now."

"Did she?" I flipped the book in my hand and let my eyes glaze down the blurb. Sounded sort of autobiographical. "Interesting."

"See what you think," the old lady said.

I wasn't sure I'd get much out of a some-true story about a girl going nuts. The old lady hadn't really said what she thought about it. Seemed to find it funny in some way. I tucked the book under my arm. "I'm going for a ride," I said.

"I could show you around. No one knows how to squeeze every laugh from this town like I do."

"I'll show myself," I said. I didn't do pillion riders. Even if they brought colors with them. "I was gonna hit some tourist traps."

She clapped me on the shoulder. I hadn't noticed before how thick her perfume was; it kinda made me sick. "I'm sure you'll have a grand old time."

I guess I went a lot of places that day. I didn't remember much of them by the time I rolled the cycle and its empty tank into the boyfriend's garage. All over I kept imagining the river, and the colors. The colors the old lady brought up seemed different from the ones I could remember.

I sat out in back of the house, jeans rolled up over my ankles and feet in the pool. I guess maybe the water was warmer than I'd expected, 'cause I couldn't really feel it. I tried to read the book the old lady had given me, but I'd blink and be on page ten or twenty-five and not remember any of what I'd read. It was real quiet, except for the pool filter running so I knew I could hear. I guessed no one was in the house. Maybe I fell asleep like that, feet in the water, pretending I could read the book in my lap. The pad of bare feet brought me back, and I expected a red-headed voice until I smelled the perfume.

She smelled like paint and dust, too, and like air that hadn't been infused with plastic and pesticides. She'd been with her artist, and her eyes still laughed over the encounter.

"We're going to dinner," she said.

I dried off and put my boots back on. "I ain't dressed for going to dinner." I'd washed off last night but my clothes still smelled like a road trip with a limited wardrobe. There were also the jeans and the t-shirt and the worn leather. Ger might get embarrassed of me.

"Doesn't matter," she said. "Everyone will assume you're extremely wealthy is all."

I thought she was joking, but no. Apparently in high-end Californian society only big-wigs got to dress as badly as I did. Over the course of the evening, several of Ger's acquaintances came over to wonder aloud whether I was his boss. The old lady wanted to play along, but I just said "no" and grinned until the inquirers went away. I figured it'd be no fun if Ger murdered the old lady tonight, before she got a chance to run out on him for the tree-artist. He looked pretty mad, which luckily made him talk less.

Mom and I had a banter going through dinner that held the ears of our corner of the restaurant. Without announcement, we started keeping score of who could get the best reactions out of the eavesdroppers. I remembered nights with the gang, surreptitiously trying to get a rise out of them when we had nothing better to do. No one ever suspected I was doing it on purpose, acting crazy or telling tall tales, and laughing at them afterward. As I sat across from the old lady and her boyfriend (silent, red in the face as the boiled lobsters on our plates) and dead-panned the nastiest stories of my gang days or anything else I could think of, I knew I had her to thank for my poker face. I wondered what my landscape would have looked like if I'd had this woman for an accomplice all my life.

And I wondered why, when I imagined that, I saw us back in the old man's house where we'd lived before, instead of the slightly less improbable option of her taking me along when she left. Maybe because I had no idea what she'd done with those years between leaving Tulsa and the award show. She wouldn't have thought to tell me herself, and I found I didn't feel like asking.

I won. She bought me a beer even though it was technically illegal. I drank it even though I didn't feel like drinking. I wondered if this was what family obligation felt like. I wondered if I was enjoying California.

The next morning I rolled my cycle out of the garage, her tank dubiously supplied from what gas cans I could find. The old lady was headed off somewhere in a sweet convertible, her wine-colored hair wound up and tucked into a turban. She idled in the driveway, blocking my escape.

"Where you headed?" she asked, hanging over the car door. She looked real funny, like a movie star, in that car. I wondered what kind of movie she'd be in, if she'd get stabbed in the shower or dance her way into some schmuck's heart or move her mouth while somebody else sang for her. She could be a Bond girl, except when 007 finally invited her to bed she'd say, "No thanks, I'm going to go live in a tree house." The audience reaction would be priceless.

Ger had arrived on the porch, smelling of coffee and aftershave. I wondered how he would take it when the old lady left him. I liked to imagine him angry. That seemed funniest. He coughed at me and said, "Going home?"

"Leaving," I answered with a shrug. "I cleaned out your gasolene." I fished some bills out of my jacket and held them out toward him.

He looked at my mother, who seemed to have lost interest but hadn't taken the initiative to drive away, and sighed. "Keep your money." I wondered if he was still sore about everyone assuming I was richer than him last night. "See you around."

"Probably not," I said as I slid my helmet on. The old lady still hadn't moved, so I pulled out over the front lawn. Under the engine and the helmet's muffle, I thought I heard her cry, "Come back around sometime! Whenever!" I might've just imagined it. I drove away.

A.N. - I think that's enough of the old lady. Sorry if this seems like something of an anticlimax. I think they're too similar, and not in the right ways, to really get along, though maybe only Motorcycle Boy realizes it. And considering what happens when MB goes home, I figured it wasn't exactly a Norman Rockwellian family reunion. I'll try to get the last two chapters up soon, though I haven't written them yet. Cheers 'til then, and thanks for reading.


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